Reverence
by ProcurerFaith
Summary: Repost: TK submits an essay to his teacher that will stay with him for a long time.


Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. All Digimon characters are owned by Toei and A. Hongo and such. I am making no money from this fic. It is a just-for-fun project. The only bit I own is my own characters and the way the words are put together.

**Author's Note; 24th June 2008** – Please remember, edits may not quite appear as you remember them, as I'm hashing together the beta and the original uploads. I do not plan to come back and amend this work (if I start picking holes in it, I'll never stop XD)

_**Reverence**_

Once a year, sometimes once a semester, you get one essay that knocks you for six. Every year it's the same. You read essay after essay and although you concentrate on the content- I have to, I'm supposed to be teaching these kids- you don't really take any notice. But there's still always _one_. One essay that kicks you in the stomach and really makes you think.

Sure, you get the essays that are fictional or theoretical. From the moment, I picked it up, I knew Takeru Takaishi's was neither of those things. It was an _emotional_ essay, and I had to wonder how many tears he shed whilst writing it.

I wish now I had set the limit at above 2,500 words, because I would have had a much _deeper_ insight into Takeru's recent distance.

Simply titled 'An Essay', it gave me no clue to what was inside.

The origin of the work was a picture. It was a black and white affair, with some people in denims carrying signs saying 'Work done for food'. It was supposed to have been an image from the Great Depression of 1930's America. I've used the picture year after year and never had a response like this.

The task was simple- whatever this picture brings to mind; write about it. For most of the class, this was simple. We'd been working with some texts that the picture represented. They wrote about the texts.

From Takeru, who obviously made some instantaneous word connections, the resulting essay was very different.

Opening the workbook to the current page, I began to read.

'An Essay by Takeru Takaishi

'A picture is a very powerful thing. It is said it can tell a thousand words. However, words have power you have no way to describe without them. Words appear everywhere in our lives- books, TV, train stations, advertisements, computers- music.

'Music is very powerful too. It has the power to hurt, to heal and to make you cry with its beauty.

'My brother always knew this. He's been romanced by music for as long as I've known him- and that's all my life. So the day he gave me his harmonica to look after, I was surprised. It was one of his most precious possessions and he knows I have a tendency to be careless with things. I don't mean it; it's just the way I am.

'I was even more surprised when the phone woke me at 3am and I heard my mother crying.

'I didn't have any more space for surprise when we got to the hospital, so I chose misery instead.

'My brother had just tried to kill himself.

'You see, my brother has depression. It's a disorder in which not enough neurotransmitters- namely seratonin- are produced. It makes people sad all the time. It also makes the people around them sad all the time.

'Having said that, he still makes me smile. He's still my brother and I'm still proud of him. Besides, he's never going to read this, so I can say what I like. In fact, I love him- even though and even _because_ he has depression.

'That sounds awful, but it's not. I love him for it because it means that he feels. In fact, he feels so much that he could almost feel all the bad stuff in the world before it happens. He's very sensitive. I've always known that too, but I could never explain it, and never really knew what it was. Before I knew what it was called for sure, I used to call it 'otherness'.

'I love him for his sensitivity. When I cry, he's there. When I was little and I'd fall, he'd pick me up. He still would. Sure, we fight sometimes- which siblings don't? - but not for long and not very often.

'When Mom and Dad split up and I watched as Dad took Matt with him, I didn't know it would be a long time before I saw them again. I thought Matt was ill, or I had been naughty and I couldn't see him- and that made me cry.

'I vividly remember crying for three days straight. My mother told me everything was fine, and that I should calm down before I made myself sick.

'I didn't and my mother was right. I made myself ill- which meant Matt and Dad came to visit. That was when I decided that making myself sick was a good way to get to see my brother.

'It was a silly idea really and it only lasted abut a week, because I got too tired and my mother was quick to discover what I had been doing.

'Sickness is still better than being without him, though.

'If I could, I'd carry _his_ sickness _for_ him. I can't though, so all I can do is help him bear it.

'The only time I don't like him is when he's coming off the Fluoxetine- otherwise known as Prozac. He can be really mean then, but he doesn't mean it. He's just scared. He just doesn't want to get back to being the way he was. They'll put him on it in six-month batches and then take him off.

'One time when I was at Dad's and Dad wasn't there, we were sitting on Matt's bed, drinking hot chocolate I asked him if he knew why he was depressed. He kind of shrugged and said

"I don't know if there's any one thing, TK. I think it's just…lots of things."

"Like what?"

"Like… I don't know."

"Like stuff you can't tell me?" I was a little angry. I could help a lot- if he'd let me. He thinks I'm still too little. So I stole some of his marshmallows with my spoon.

"Hey!"

"What? So tell me. Or I'll take the rest of them."

"Little snot." I grinned at that. He smiled a little when he said it.

"Like…the little things. It doesn't have to be the big things that get ya." I listened as he spoke.

"Sometimes you just… can't be bothered anymore. It's as if everything you do is pointless, that no matter what you try, it won't make a difference. You get stuck in the same rut and you can't get out. You think that every move you make, you're making a bigger mess and that everybody will be better off without you. You turn around and say something you didn't mean to say or do something you didn't mean to do and you never meant to upset anybody… Take that worried scowl off your face."

"Sorry." I mumbled.

"It all goes back so far, TK. I probably couldn't remember where it started if I tried. As far back as mom and dad's divorce, maybe farther."

"But then, why doesn't it affect me that way?" I asked, puzzled. He smiled at me.

"Because you don't have the same personality I do, TK. You're practically totally opposite."

"You mean I'm a lunkhead?" I grinned. He laughed in response.

"No, that's not what I mean! Idiot. I mean, you don't take things the way I do, or do things the way I do."

"Oh, so I'm an idiot?"

"No, I-" I stopped him.

"Now I'm taking things the way _you _do." He paused.

"Ah. The student becomes the teacher, huh?" He answered, and I just shrugged and smiled.

"You get my point?" I asked. He nodded.

"Yeah, I get your point." He laughed and got up.

"Where are you going?" I asked. I can't help but ask sometimes. Sometimes it feels like I have to- like if I don't, I'll be neglecting some little sign that something's wrong.

"Just out to the kitchen, TK. Stop fussing." He indicated for me to give him my mug- it was empty by now. I gave it to him and said,

"What about the other stuff?"

"What other stuff?"

"You know… The scars and stuff…"

"Oh."

'He walked out of the room then, and I followed him into the kitchen. I didn't want to miss anything he said.

"You shouldn't worry about it."

"That's a really idiot thing to say, oniichan." I was getting mad again. How was I supposed to not worry about it when my big brother was taking razorblades to his legs? He didn't answer me this time.

'He put the mugs in the sink and turned to me.

"Why do you want to know all this stuff?" He scowled. He doesn't like it when I pry too deeply. I guess nobody does.

"Because I want to be able to understand why" I said simply. If I can understand how he feels, I can do more to help him. I _want _to do more to help him. If I can't understand what he's going through- and really I don't, because I've never felt that way- then I'm closed off to him. I won't be any good to him.

'He turned away from me again then and started to speak slowly and quietly.

"It's called self-injury, TK. Or SI for short. It must be hard for you to imagine why I do it."

"Yes. It is." I said quietly. "Do you still do it?"

"Do you want the truth?" He asked, after a moment. I steeled myself and said

"Yes."

"Sometimes."

"But why?"

"Because it's one step up from suicide. It's doing something to…to punish myself for saying a wrong thing or doing a wrong thing without going the whole hog and trying what I tried before."

"But you don't do anything _wrong_." I responded softly, feeling the return of that worried scowl. "You're perfect."

'He sighed sharply and shook his head.

"Am I?" He snapped disbelievingly.

"You are to me."

'His face softened.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For snapping at you."

"Nah. I'm used to it." I made an 'over my head' motion and grinned. He smiled back again in that little understated way that he does.

"See? I'm not perfect though."

"I'm not going to argue with you over it. There just isn't another word for it." I grinned.

'Matt turned around again and opened a cupboard to dig around for some munchies, shaking his head. Sometimes he knows better than to argue with me- and sometimes I know better than to think he's all right.

"I'm sorry I brought it up." I apologise.

"Doesn't matter. I understand you asking, I think." He looked over his shoulder at me.

"Although if it were you and not me, I'd probably just smack you around the head and yell at you. You handle it a lot better."

"Not inside, I don't." I replied. I think my answer surprised him a little. He finally took his head out of the cupboard he'd been in for the past minute or so and looked at me properly.

"It must've, I guess… been…painful…or something…"

"Or something is right. It was a lot more than just painful."

"Dad's hidden the entire contents of the medicine cupboard." He smiled weakly. I raised an eyebrow.

"Can you blame him?"

"I guess not." The smile widened a little.

'We changed the subject then- it went back to school and our friends and our out of school time stuff.

'If you ever met my brother, you'd realise what a sensuous person he is, too. Sensuous, not sensual. Two different words with very different meanings. Take it the wrong way and it could sound kind of perverted. Sensuous meaning something pleasurably affecting the senses. My brother does that. Sensuous is something I'd like to say I am, but I know I'm not. It's not something he means to be, it's just something he is.

'Matt's the kind of person you always know is in a room. Some people would call it 'presence'. He never has to make himself known, he's just there. He exudes his very essence just by being around you, kind of. This means he should be easy to sense when he's in pain, but he's not. He's been so good at hiding it for so long, that it's still hard to tell sometimes.

'Sometimes, if you watch him carefully, you can feel when he's sad. When he's thinking about the little things that upset him so much. If you sit down and think about it, you can almost hear him crying inside.

'It's at those moments when I most want to help him. I can't do anything, though. All I can do is be there, and it's not enough. I want to take his pain and put it in my heart and make it into something beautiful, but I can't.

'He hates to take the pills too. They make him sleepy all the time. He once made a comment that the reason they made him feel better was because he spent more time sleeping than he did thinking. I'm sure that can't be true, because he thinks a lot. We all do. They also make him lose weight, which _I_ hate. He doesn't need to loose any weight, he's a rake already.

'On really bad days they can even make him sick so badly that all he can do is sit in front of the TV with a bucket. I hate it when they do that to him.

'However- he does have a good deal of friends around him who care about him very much. I think he appreciates their support a lot more than he would ever say. More than you could ever tell if you didn't know him like we do.

'It's an ongoing struggle for him- I know that much. He gets up every day, does the everyday stuff… Sometimes he goes out, sometimes he stays in. We've managed to convince him now that getting out of the apartment is a very good thing. Sometimes, he even enjoys himself.

'One of the other sad things that upsets me about it is that he'll probably have to take these pills on and off for the rest of his life. They're horrible. They do horrible things to him. I guess, though, that it's better than him doing horrible things to himself.

'My father won't even let headache pills be stored in the house anymore. That was how Matt chose to go- by overdosing himself on painkillers. I guess I should see something poetic in that, but I don't. Matt gets mad at Dad, because he has to ask him to get paracetamol for him when he gets sick with the pills. I can understand why Dad does it, but if Matt never gets the trust put back in him, how will he ever get better? He thinks he's haunted enough by his mistakes- forcing the worst one he ever made down his throat won't make him any better.

'It was a bad, _bad _mistake. I know that in order to be perfect- like I called my brother earlier- you're not supposed to make mistakes. I know that. But perfection is a many faceted thing. It's different for everybody. My brother succumbed to a moment of horrible weakness. We all do that sometimes. So far as I'm concerned, he's still perfect.

'I believe that he _can_ get better. I think if I'd done more for him in the first place, maybe he would never have got sick. Maybe he would have. I don't know. I know it's not my fault because it was always his choice to try and commit suicide- but I knew about a lot of the things that bothered him. I never saw him without his burdens so I thought he coped with them. It's easy to be blind to what you see every day.

'I won't forget the razorblades. I won't forget making the silly mistake of asking why they were in his school bag and then not listening to his answer properly. I won't forget 3:46am in the Intensive Care Unit, or 7:45 the morning he was released. I won't forget. I won't forget that he cried. I won't forget getting out of my bed and tugging my mother's sleeve in a way I hadn't done since I was eight whilst _she_ cried. I won't forget when she told me why she was crying.

'I _can't_ forget. I don't understand why my brother feels this way- why he lets such little things get to him, or why he can't look at the sunshine and smile rather than sit in the dark and mope- but maybe one day I will.

'I have so much more to say, but I'm about out of my word limit.'

Where normally I'm full of comments, both good and bad, all I could think of was 'You should let your brother read this, Takeru'. I gave him 93 for the essay. It was excellent.

Unfortunately I had to take off marks for the bad grammar- and the regrettable presentation.

_-fini-_

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Thank you for reading right to the end. I appreciate your time, and hope I entertained you for just a little bit :)


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